Personalized Medicine at Coriell

Personalized medicine is the use of genomic information – in addition to family history, lifestyle, and environmental factors – to customize health management. By combining genomic and clinical information, more accurate predictions can be made about a person’s susceptibility of developing disease, the course of disease, and response to treatment.

Personalized medicine has the potential to offer patients and their doctors several advantages, including:

The ability to make better informed clinical decisions

A higher probability of desired health outcomes by using better-targeted therapies

The reduced probability of adverse reactions from medications and treatments

A focus on prevention and prediction of disease, rather than reaction to it

Earlier disease intervention

Reduced healthcare costs

Coriell Institute for Medical Research is recognized as a leader in the emerging field of personalized medicine. The Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative® (CPMC®) is an ongoing research study designed to understand the usefulness of personal genetic risk and pharmacogenomic information (the influence of genetic variation on drug response) in health management and clinical decision-making. More than 9,500 research study participants are currently receiving personalized genetic risk results from our study. The goal of the CPMC is to understand the value this information brings to the healthcare system, to the industries that develop its products and to patients.

CPMC study participants regularly complete follow-up questionnaires that explore how they are using the information they receive from the study, whether they are making lifestyle changes to reduce their disease risk or improving their medication response, and if they are sharing their results with family and healthcare providers. To decide which conditions and gene-drug pairs are potentially actionable, the CPMC research study engages two independent, expert advisory boards: the Informed Cohort Oversight Board (ICOB) and the Pharmacogenomics Advisory Group (PAG).

The CPMC research study is a model for the ethical, legal, and responsible implementation of best practices in personalized medicine. Aside from contributing to scientific literature, CPMC researchers also help educate the medical and lay communities about the usefulness of personalized medicine to support its integration into healthcare delivery.